Obama's grandmother to perform Muslim Hajj

JERUSALEM – President Barack Obama’s paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, will reportedly perform the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage this year along with her son Syeed Obama.

A private Kenyan television channel, quoted extensively by the Kenyan and Pakistani media, reported Sarah Obama and her son will also visit Dubai before going to Saudi Arabia for performing Hajj. The pair lives in Kenya.

The News, a newspaper in Dubai, confirmed the report. It quoted United Arab Emirates’ property tycoon Sulaiman Al Fahim as stating he will personally sponsor Sarah Obama’s trip after meeting the elderly Obama in Kenya last week and learning she had always wanted to perform the Hajj.

“I found out that she had not been to the Hajj and that she very much wants to go. As my own mother is no longer with us, our family has a spare place. So I invited her and she has accepted,” The News quoted Fahim as saying.

The Hajj is the largest annual pilgrimage in the world. The fifth pillar of Islam requires every able-bodied Muslim to travel to Mecca at least once in their life in a demonstration of solidarity with fellow Muslims and in an act of individual submission to Allah.

Obama’s grandmother, a Muslim known locally as “Mama Sarah,” lives in Kogelo, a tiny village near the Ugandan border. She was in Washington, D.C., in January for Obama’s swearing-in ceremony.

WND’s Jerome Corsi reports in the April issue of Whistleblower that Sarah Obama is also the woman who affirmed her elected grandson was born in Kenya, prompting doubts that Barack Obama is eligible to serve as president of the United States.

Whistleblower, Corsi writes, obtained an affidavit submitted by Rev. Kweli Shuhubia, the official Swahili translator for the Anabaptist Conference held annually in Kenya.

In the affidavit Shuhubia states that he visited Obama’s grandmother at her home to conduct a telephone conference interview with Bishop Ron McRae in the United States, in which the bishop asked Sarah Obama if her grandson was born in Kenya.

“Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama was very adamant that her grandson, Senator Barack Hussein Obama, was born in Kenya, and that she was present and witnessed his birth in Kenya, not the United States,” Shuhubia states in the affidavit. “During the conversation, Ms. Sarah Hussein Obama never changed her reply that she was indeed present when Senator Barack Obama was born in Kenya.”

Obama was ‘quite religious in Islam’

Obama’s faith was a central part of his presidential campaign. He has repeatedly has denied he is a Muslim. His presidential campaign website contained the statement, “Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.”

But as WND has reported, public records in Indonesia listed Obama as a Muslim during his early years, and a number of childhood friends claimed to the media Obama was once a mosque-attending Muslim.

Obama’s campaign several times had wavered in response to reporters queries regarding the senator’s childhood faith.

Commenting on a Los Angeles Times report quoting a childhood friend stating Obama prayed in a mosque, Obama’s campaign released a statement explaining the senator “has never been a practicing Muslim.”

Widely distributed reports have noted that in January 1968 Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta’s Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro. He was listed as an Indonesian citizen whose stepfather, listed on school documents as “L Soetoro Ma,” worked for the topography department of the Indonesian Army.

Catholic schools in Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students but exempt them from studying religion.

After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled “also as a Muslim, according to documents” in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta.

Laotze blog, run by an American expatriate in Southeast Asia who visited the Besuki school, noted, “All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school, and a young ‘Barry Soetoro,’ being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school. He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam.”

Indeed, in Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” he acknowledged studying the Quran and describes the public school as “a Muslim school.”

“In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies,” wrote Obama.

The Indonesian media have been flooded with accounts of Obama’s childhood Islamic studies, some describing him as a religious Muslim.

Speaking to the country’s Kaltim Post, Tine Hahiyary, who was principal of Obama’s school while he was enrolled there, said she recalls he studied the Quran in Arabic.

“At that time, I was not Barry’s teacher, but he is still in my memory,” claimed Tine, who is 80 years old.

The Kaltim Post said Obama’s teacher, named Hendri, had died.

“I remember that he studied mengaji (recitation of the Quran),” Tine said, according to an English translation by Loatze.

Mengaji, or the act of reading the Quran with its correct Arabic punctuation, is usually taught to more religious pupils and is not known as a secular study.

“We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house,” Amir said. “If he was wearing a sarong (waist fabric worn for religious or casual occasions) he looked funny.”

The Los Angeles Times, which sent a reporter to Jakarta, quoted Zulfin Adi, who identified himself as among Obama’s closest childhood friends, stating the presidential candidate prayed in a mosque, something Obama’s campaign claimed he never did.

“We prayed, but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque,” said Adi. “But as kids, we loved to meet our friends and went to the mosque together and played.”

Friday prayers

Obama’s official campaign site contained a page titled “Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.” The page stated, “Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ.”

But the campaign changed its tune when it issued a “practicing Muslim” clarification to the Los Angeles Times.

An article in March by the Chicago Tribune apparently disputed Adi’s statements to the L.A. paper. The Tribune caught up with Obama’s declared childhood friend, who now describes himself as only knowing Obama for a few months in 1970 when his family moved to the neighborhood. Adi said he was unsure about his recollections of Obama.

But the Tribune found Obama did attend mosque.

“Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia,” states the Tribune article.

It quotes Obama’s former neighbors and third-grade teacher recalling how the young Obama “occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers.”

In an interview with the New York Times, Obama described the Muslim call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

The Times’ Nicholos Kristof wrote Obama recited, “with a first-class [Arabic] accent,” the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer.

The first few lines of the call to prayer state:

Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet …

Some attention also has been paid to Obama’s paternal side of the family, including his father and his brother, Roy.

Writing in a chapter of his book describing his 1992 wedding, Obama stated: “The person who made me proudest of all was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol.”

Still, Obama maintains he was raised by his Christian mother and repeatedly has labeled as “smears” several reports attempting to paint him as a Muslim.

“Let’s make clear what the facts are: I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance [to the American flag] and lead the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes in the United States Senate when I’m presiding,” he told the Times of London earlier this year.